Posts tagged firelands

On Februay 3rd, 2010, a guild by the name of “Ensidia” took the world first kill of Arthas in 25m, normal mode. The next day, they had their kill stripped from the records, and the 25 participants recieved a 72 hour ban for “exploitation of mechanics.” If you’re unfamiliar with the story, i’ll give a very brief rundown. There is a part of the Lich King encounter where the outer edge of the platform crumbles away, and there are random adds that will pick up players, attempting to drop them off the sides. Now, the “exploit” in question was really more of a bug on Blizzard’s part. Members of the raid were using Saronite Bombs (an engineered item) in their rotation. These bombs caused siege damage to the Lich King’s platform, which for some reason, caused the crumbled outer ring to rebuild. The end result was that when the adds would pick up players in an effort to drop them off the sides, they would merely land on the rebuilt edge of the platform, and be able to continue the fight.

Fast forward to last week. A Taiwanese guild by the name of “Stars” was one of many to clear all 7 bosses of the Firelands in the first week of it’s existance. After killing Ragnaros, they each paid money to faction transfer, which resets a member’s raid ID, but keeps their kill history, and started working on heroics. Now, under normal circumstances, a guild has to kill the last boss in a raid (Ragnaros, in this case) to unlock heroic modes. With the raid lockout system that’s currently in place, the very earliest a person SHOULD have been able to work on heroic modes would be today, July the 5th, after the server resets took place. “Stars” effectively bypassed this by intentionally exploiting a loophole in Blizzards system, and were given the world first kill of Shannox on heroic.

Now, it seems to me that Blizzard should have erased that kill from the books, and given the offenders the same treatment as “Ensidia” got a year and a half ago. However, Blizzard simply went “Whoops?” and locked out all heroic modes until the reset today. Now don’t misunderstand me, these are both issues that Blizzard should have taken care of before they were able to make it live, but it seems to me that what “Stars” did was far worse than what “Ensidia” did, simply becaues Ensidia didn’t do anything different than what they always do. They were playing the game like they had been doing (and showed several recounts, and WorldofLogs parses to prove that they had been using Saronite Bombs on other boss kills, rotationally). “Stars” on the other hand went OUT OF THEIR WAY to exploit a loophole and get world first on their Shannox HC kill. Admittedly, I don’t have all the details, but something definitely seems fishy in the water there.

Patch 4.2 is coming. It’s not coming tomorrow, as originally thought, but next week (June 28th, for those of you playing at home) instead. There isn’t a whole lot of actual news this week, so here are a few things to keep in mind over the next 8 days.

Valor and Conquest points are being zeroed out on patch day, and rolled into Justice and Honor points respectively. They are NOT letting you go over the cap, so if you’re in danger of going over the respective caps on patch day, I would buy whatever it is you need to buy before patch day.

Melee dps in general seem to be getting nerfed. for some reason. Unless your class starts with an “R”, in which case Blizzard still loves you more than the rest of their children.

Normal mode t11 raids are being nerfed into oblivion. They are doing this to make the first tier more accessible to people who were stuck on certain fights, or people who just didn’t raid much at all. If you’re closing in on a boss kill, get it done before the patch. (Side note: My guild is now 12/12 normal modes. /cheer)

This is already implemented, but a change has been put into place regarding the authenticators. Now, if you sign in from the same location regularly, you won’t need to authenticate every time. I will discuss this at another time when I have more information (and coherent thoughts) on the subject.

Seriously… Warriors and DKs? Your DPS is gonna drop… Sorry.

Apparently feral druids are safe from this melee nerf. Good thing, cause their damage was coming up low towards the higher gear levels.

Normal mode t11 raids will no longer drop Valor Points (note that this includes Argaloth in Baradin’s Hold). Heroic t11 bosses will, as will bosses in the new Firelands raid.

They decided to do away with requiring a 12/12 clear in order to start the quest line for Tarecgosa, the new legendary. Instead you have to kill a Molten Lord inside the Firelands… Yep… Make of that what you will.

They have given us new map opening and mail opening animations… Hooray?

The amount of VP awarded from a boss kill in the Firelands (and Occu’thar, the new boss in Baradin’s Hold) has been significantly increased, to compensate for the lesser amount of bosses. 120 (up from 70) in 10m, and 140 (up from 90) in 25m.

There are new dailies available in Mt Hyjal, to supplement the new raid. There’s also a new faction: Avengers of Hyjal, with new rep items for sale. Also, there will be new crafting recipes for almost every profession. Hooray things to do!

Tier 11 pieces that required a token (head and shoulder slots) before will still require a token after the conversion.

I am *really* looking forward to the Firelands. I’ve basically been devouring PTR videos, both to prepare myself for raid leading against the new bosses, and just to see what they’re like. But even aside from the new raid content, i’m also really looking forward to the new dailies, and other things to keep my time freshly occupied with things to do in-game. Plus, it’ll be interesting to see how quickly one can gear up a toon to raid ready with the old VP gear being shifted down to costing JP. I’m kind of an altaholic, so i’m curious how that’ll work out… Anyway. See you in the realm of fire!

Friday evening, Blizzard released a preview of the upcoming Tier 12 armor sets, thematically attached to the upcoming 4.2 content patch and the Firelands raid. Six different classes were previewed–paladin, mage, rogue, hunter, death knight, priest–and between those sets there is only about 3 really different armors. Helmets not withstanding of course, they are usually dissimilar. You can see the actual preview here.

I have got to say that I am extremely underwhelmed. Rogue armor looks pretty much like it always does, for better or worse. Paladin, Mage, and Hunter gear looks pretty identical. The DK armor is reminiscent of an older tier of warlock armor (kind of like tier 6 maybe?). The hunter gear looks… well… He looks like a pirate. Maybe i’m being exceedingly critical, but REALLY Blizzard? I understand you want everything to be firey for the raid’s theme, but that doesn’t mean they should all look the same. Not all fire is created equal. And what is up with the goblin-faced pirate-hunter? I think that’s even worse than the murlocstalker set, and I really wasn’t a fan of THAT either. And why does the paladin headpiece look like a c1950’s scuba helm, or possibly Warlock t7?

I think this is why I am disappointed over the gear previews. Through most of the tiers (t9 not withstanding, but I can at least understand a rationale behind that one), gear looked like it belonged to a class. Warlock gear felt distinctly warlocky. Rogue gear has always had that sort of subtle, shadowy type feel too it (but the tentacle-shoulders in t8 were boggling and creepy in a fun sort of way). Although, to be fair, I still feel like the rogue gear conveys “rogue” to me more than the other sets convey their particular class.

I think, maybe in the long run, the look of gear is maybe a small complaint, but if I am going to spend the all this time raiding to get these pieces, I want them to make my characters look like the champions that they are… and I am certainly glad that I don’t raid on my hunter anymore. Poor hunters. On the plus side, at least, the bosses they’ve released look amazing. Just look at that firey-cat, for example.